Tolerance cannot be measured in terms of degrees of intolerance. I am essentially opposed to burning books even when they incite others to violence. But freedom is either an absolute or it is conditioned on not inciting others to violence. Anything else is rationalized bigotry.

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Thursday, July 5, 2012

America - Decline and Chaos in a Fractured Region

American
decline is viewed as one of the potential catastrophic game changers for
instability in the Near East.

The
recent mishap involving Syria,
which shot down a Turkish F-4 Phantom jet, is one example of a trigger, a planned
or unfortunate mishap that could ignite the region in a populist war.

Iran, via its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah could
precipitate a conflict in order to divert the attention of the international
community away from its nuclear programme.
Spread by religiously driven hubris and spiralling out of control
through a confrontation engineered by political and military zealots it could
escalate into a bloody contagion of violence that experience has taught us
would not be easily contained.Providing the fuel
for this bleak scenario are the foul mouthed ravings of Ayatollahs, Imams and itinerant
street preachers. And before we raise
the spectre of 21st Century Reason to dismiss such fears we should
remember that being swept up by passion is a timeless human pursuit.

Egypt and Turkey, with increasing poverty
rates fuelled by rapid population growth nourishing their fundamentalist
constituency’s extremist agendas, could provoke a regional firestorm that will
be difficult to bring under safe control.

If
Egypt
with some 40 security agencies cannot maintain either domestic stability or
conformity of message in its own society then other less organised regimes
should be anxiously reviewing their own exit strategies. If we exclude Gaza and the West Bank,
21 other Arab countries govern by exploiting ethnic prejudice and religious
division. Perhaps the best way of bringing stability to the whole region is to
begin serious discussion about breaking up the artificially created Arab states
and giving self determination to all the minorities within their borders. There
is no logical reason that the Arab ethnic minority in Israel should demand separate development and
the same privilege is denied to those ethnic minorities living in the rest of
the Near East.
For that matter, why stop with the Near East?

Sayyid
Qutb was possibly the 20th Centuries most famous Egyptian propagandist
of the Muslim Brotherhood. He saw Jews as the people preaching a ‘one world’
culture where everyone has the right to their beliefs. But for Qutb there was no such thing as a
market place of ideas. His fear of this ‘Jewish’ vision was the opposite of the
tyranny he preached. To quote
“Occidentalism – A short history of Anti Westernism” (Ian Buruma and Avishai
Margalit): “Qutb’s idea of community is defined by pure faith, as the Nazi State
was based on pure race.” That last
sentence encapsulates Islamic Fundamentalism.
Its theologically derived hatred is incompatible with peace.

The
US remains Saudi Arabia’s
closest ally and the nation Saudis most revile. It is not only the Saudi
approach that is troublesome. Xenophobia
in the Arab world, toward the infidel and not just the infidel but any
non-Arab, will only be debated once it is appreciated that it is in their best
interest to open up their societies. But with Islamist governments sweeping
away previous dictatorships the future is bleak unless incitement becomes
something of an Islamic ‘own goal.’ Because
Egypt is seen as the
cornerstone of a revolutionary fundamentalist process it reinforces Egypt’s self
image as being the centre of the Arab world. It places Egypt on a strategic path that views peace with Israel, the rest of the region and Europe as no more than a currency of negotiable value.

It
is a view that is shared throughout the Near-East.

America will remain, for our foreseeable future,
the chief wielder of the big stick in world affairs. US global intervention is necessary
because there is no other superpower that can protect Western interests. If we choose to live a life that is governed
by identification with Western values (whatever that may mean) then we must
defend those values. It is neither colonialism nor arrogance to make choices in
ones life. Discrimination as a positive
virtue means making choices. We choose to differentiate between lifestyles and
ways in which we relate to each other. US interests and global capitalism may
or may not be wholly consonant with every Western nation’s vision of Western
society but they are the only ones preventing us from falling onto our own
sword.

To take
responsibility for the triumphalism of our enemies is not self-abnegation, it
is suicide. In a world we all share there is still time to speak up against the
Islam of the Fundamentalists. Only then
will we have a chance to achieve peace.